CHAPTER 13

Why would the wife of a state senator make a practice of hiring illegals? Maybe Claire wasn’t the one doing the hiring. Whether or not she was doing the hiring, it didn’t look good for illegals to be anywhere near a payroll a state senator might be connected to. Political careers had ended because of much less. Hiring is usually the job of the ranch foreman. I wondered if Sam Amos was still the foreman. Sam defined the word cowboy in my book. He was loyal to a fault and smartly honest—he knew when to keep his mouth shut and when to offer his opinion. He’d walked in on me and Claire in the barn with our pants down more than once. He never said a word. But there was a new pack of condoms waiting on us in the upstairs loft each time we snuck away.

I was halfway back to Rhonda’s when my cell beeped. It was Sophia.

“Have you had lunch?” she asked.

It didn’t matter if I had just eaten; the delightful Miss Ortez was going to hear that I was starving. “Sure haven’t. You?”

“Can you meet me in Kermit? There’s a little sandwich shop in a strip center on Austin Drive called Coney Island Subs. There’s a big chain drugstore on the corner.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I just need to go over some things with you. When will you be here?”

“I’m about twenty minutes out.”

She hesitated, then said, “I’ll wait.”

I mashed the accelerator. It was rude to keep a lady waiting.

Coney Island Subs was sandwiched between an easy-installment insurance agency and a Great Bargains dollar store. A row of booths lined one wall of the sub shop. Sophia was in the back booth looking dangerously radiant in a red tank top and tiny sweater.

“Isn’t Coney Island known for its hot dogs?” I said, sliding in across from her.

She arched her brows and stared at me without saying anything. Finally, a cynical grin spread across her gorgeous lips. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

I felt my face redden to the color of her top and immediately jerked the white collar from around my neck. I don’t embarrass easily, more like never, but my face felt as hot as that damned chicken dish I’d had at our last lunch. Sophia Ortez made me blush! I wasn’t used to blushing; I didn’t know how to recover. I didn’t like not being in control.

“You’re apparently a man of many talents, but priest? I have a hard time buying that one.”

I grinned sheepishly. “I needed a way to get in to see Hector Martinez.”

She smiled and slowly shook her head, then lightly touched her lip. “And I guess you got into a prison fight while you were there?”

I ran my thumb over my busted lip. “A rough game of hoops.”

“It looks like it. Well, I hope your trip to the prison paid off.”

“It did. I’m convinced the kid didn’t shoot Burke McCallen.”

A barrel-chested guy with enough hair on his arms to make a toupee came over to take our order. Sophia ordered a turkey club on toasted wheat, hold the cheese. I ordered the Italian sub, all the way.

“So, if Hector Martinez didn’t shoot McCallen, who did?” she asked after Hairy Arms left to get our drinks.

“That’s a whole ’nother conspiracy theory. But—Hector Martinez is connected to the missing girls, and apparently, the missing girls are connected to Ryce’s death. Or did you find out something different?” I prayed for Tatum’s sake there wasn’t any truth to the rumor about Ryce doing the nasty with an underage boy.

“That was one thing I wanted to meet with you about. No—Odessa PD hasn’t done a prostitution sting in over a year and they’ve never nabbed a fellow officer in any sting. And they’d never heard of Ryce McCallen.”

I wasn’t surprised, but I was relieved.

Hairy Arms brought our drinks, then wobbled on a bum knee back over to the deli counter.

“What else did you find?”

“You told me that everyone in the county seemed scared of Sheriff Gaylord Denny.” She popped a straw in her glass of water. “I don’t think it’s the sheriff they have to be scared of.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I just came from Sheriff Denny’s office. I spent over an hour interviewing him.”

I nearly choked on a drink of water. “Interviewing him about what?”

“The missing girls.”

Hairy Arms brought our sandwiches and slid me the ticket. Sophia reached for it but wasn’t fast enough. I folded it and slipped it in my pocket. “What’d he say about the missing girls?”

She shrugged. “He said he didn’t know anything about it, but he would look into it.” She took a hungry bite of her sandwich.

I stared at her, waiting for the punch line. “And that’s it? He’s just going to look into it? Darlin’—he may be the one behind it.”

She shook her head, took another bite of sandwich, then wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “Have you ever met him?”

I cocked my head, not sure where she was going. “No. I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“He’s a doddering old man. That’s why it took an hour to interview him. His mind kept … wandering, like he has dementia or something.”

I took a bite of my sandwich and chewed slowly, wondering how long it had been since Burke had seen his former boss. “You think maybe he was playing you?”

She was quick to shake her head. “I have an aunt with dementia. I’ve seen it firsthand. If Denny was playing me, the man deserves an Oscar for his performance.”

I still wasn’t convinced. “If he is losing his faculties, you don’t think people would notice? The sheriff of any county’s a public figure. There’s meetings they have to attend with county management, there’s conferences, there’s—”

“I get it. But that’s what the undersheriff’s for. I’ve got an intern pulling the minutes of the past year’s board of alderman meetings to see if the sheriff actually attended, or if he sent a representative.”

I took a couple bites of the sub while considering Sophia’s theory. “If he’s that bad off, who’s running the department’s day-to-day operations?”

She looked at me and shrugged. I wasn’t comfortable just accepting the sheriff was a feeble old man who couldn’t remember the last thing he’d said. Or that he had no idea eight teenage girls were mysteriously missing from his county.

“You don’t like it. I’m sure he has some lucid moments.” She finished her sandwich and pushed the plate aside.

“He’s got to have more than some lucid moments. He’s still doing interviews—if he was that bad off, those in his inner circle would close in. Reporters, or even the general public, wouldn’t have access to him.”

She propped her chin in her hand and looked at me. She was on the verge of speaking but carefully considering what she was going to say. Finally, she slightly grinned, reached in her bag, then slid a business card across the table.

I read the card then burst out laughing. Baskets to Go—Sophia’s Custom Creations. “Gift baskets?”

“At least I didn’t impersonate a priest.”

We laughed until we were both breathless and I was amazed at how easy it was. There were no fleeting moments of wanting to choke the lifeblood from one another followed by the burning desire to rip one another’s clothes off. Not that I hadn’t already imagined what that gorgeous bronzed-colored body would look like covered only in a shadow.

“Okay, so what’s next?” she asked.

I quickly pushed the previous thoughts out of my mind in case she was a mind reader on top of her other talents. “I’m heading over to the McCallen’s to take another look at the backyard where Ryce died. What’s next on your agenda?”

“Interview the parents of the missing girls.”

“You don’t trust Ryce’s notes?”

She shook her head. “It’s not that. He was very thorough. But, professionally, I can’t just accept them as the unadulterated truth. I need to speak with these parents myself.”

I stared at my half-empty water glass wondering if I should be an optimist and say it was half-full and it was just a coincidence that two of the missing girls’ fathers worked at the K-Bar Ranch. That left six whose fathers didn’t. Or at least that I didn’t know about. “When you’re interviewing the parents, pay close attention to where they work.”

“You think there’s a connection?”

I slowly shrugged. “I just don’t want to overlook anything.”

*   *   *

Jasper the border collie met me in Tatum’s driveway, turning circles and yapping his head off. I dug the camera out of the glove compartment and got out, telling Jasper to hush. He darted off behind the house, moving ten times faster than I could on a good day. He was back with a slobbery tennis ball clamped between his teeth before I made it to the front door. He dropped it at my feet and barked my instructions. Toss it, you human idiot.… I tossed it once, then escaped into the house before he brought it back for round two.

“Burke, it’s Gypsy,” I yelled from the living room.

“In the kitchen.”

He was at the table writing out a grocery list. I pulled up a chair and sat the camera on the table. He glared at me over the rims of his reading glasses. “Wedding or funeral?”

“Pardon?”

He looked me up and down. “Only time people get dressed up ’round here is for a wedding or a funeral.”

I laughed. “How ’bout visitation day at Reeves. Does that count?”

“You dressed up for Hector Martinez?”

I grinned and nodded. “Yeah.” I didn’t feel like going into the priest story again.

He pushed the grocery list aside, removed his glasses, and gave me a look over. “I hope whoever beat the hell out of you looks worse than you do.”

“I had a run-in with Mark Peterson’s elbow.”

He raised his brows. “Peterson? What happened?”

“Seems my brother-in-law has a once-a-week game of hoops with a bunch of fellow officers. He invited me to tag along. Peterson doesn’t play nice when he’s losing.”

Burke studied me hard for a moment. “And did Mr. Peterson meet your elbow, too?”

I laughed and the pain in my ribs nearly took my breath. “He met a ball in the face, bloodied his nose a little,” I said, slightly wheezing. I wondered if Mom was on duty at the hospital.

“I guess that put an end to it when he saw you weren’t goin’ to roll over and play dead.” He smiled.

“Not really. He ended it on a high note. Let’s just say I seriously thought I’d be singing soprano the rest of my life.”

He raised his brows again. “That hurts.”

I slowly nodded. And experts say you can’t really remember pain. I say they’ve never had their balls shoved into their throats.

“So what happened with Martinez?”

I filled him in on the visit. He hung on every word.

“So he won’t recant his confession because he’s scared his kid sister will disappear, too.”

“Legit reason, I guess.”

“You know, with no real evidence against him, no serious previous record … a jury might have found him not guilty. But he didn’t want to take his chances with a jury.” Burke rubbed his chin, running his fingers slowly over the stubble.

“He said Peterson told him he knew where his sister was and if he ever wanted to see her again, he’d cooperate.”

“So to get him to confess, they told him they knew where the older sister was, and to keep him from recanting, they told him the same thing would happen to his kid sister.”

I nodded. “That’s pretty much it.”

Burke slowly nodded. “But why tell you this? If he’s not goin’ to recant his confession, what difference does it make who told him what?”

I slowly shrugged. I hadn’t figured that out yet. There was a lot to this case I hadn’t figured out yet. “Where’s Tatum?” I asked.

Burke bobbed his head toward the bedrooms. “In his room playing a video game. Too stinking hot to do too much outside.”

That was God’s truth. But there was work to be done. “Well, I’m goin’ drag him outside for a few minutes. I want to go over what happened when he found Ryce.”

Burke slowly nodded.

“What do you remember about it?”

He rubbed his hands over his face and sighed heavily. “They’d already removed the body by the time I got here. They took him straight to the morgue. Told me not to worry about anything. They’d handle it.” His lips twisted with disgust.

“Who is they?”

“Peterson and Averitt McCoy. Sheriff Denny showed up about twenty minutes after I got here. For all the help he was.”

I thought about my conversation with Sophia and wondered, giving Burke’s feelings toward the sheriff, if his perspective could have been skewed. “How did Denny act?”

Burke shrugged. “He offered his condolences. Said if there was anything the department could do, to call.” He looked at me through squinted eyes. “Why?”

I told him about Sophia’s meeting with the sheriff. He thought about it, then rolled over to the cabinet and pulled out a new bottle of Jim Beam. He got two glasses from the dish drainer, then rolled back over to the table. I do wish he drank Johnnie Walker. He poured me a shot, then one for himself.

“So this gal thinks Denny’s not running the department,” he said.

“I’m not really buying it, but it’s something to consider, I suppose.” I took a careful sip of the whiskey. Last time Burke brought out a bottle, I finished it and agreed to work pro bono. I was prone to mistakes but seldom made the same one twice.

“Peterson’s not high enough up the command chain to run things behind the scene,” Burke said.

“So that means either someone higher up is involved or Peterson has something on Denny. And if that’s the case, Denny knows what’s going on but he’s looking the other way.”

Burke swallowed his whiskey in one shot, then poured another round. I waved him off as he tilted the bottle in my direction.

“Maybe your shooting wasn’t related to the election at all. Maybe it’s related to the missing girls.”

“Or … if Denny was looking the other way and if I had won, that would have put a damper on their little trafficking ring.”

“Did they recover the bullet?”

He nodded. “But I never saw it. Surgeon told Ryce he handed it over to someone in the department as evidence.”

“But there’s no evidence file.”

“Not to my knowledge anyway. I think Ryce had asked to see it and, of course, no one could find it.”

I wondered if the surgeon would know the difference between calibers. “What’s the department’s standard issue?”

“Glock .357 sig.”

“Interchangeable with a .45.” It didn’t matter what type of gun Burke was shot with if we couldn’t find the bullet. And I’d bet finding it wasn’t ever going to happen.

Burke poured himself another shot, then capped the bottle. “I appreciate your interest in what happened to me, but, like I said earlier … my main concern is what happened to Ryce.”

I slowly nodded. “But if I’m right, it’s all connected.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

I smiled. “I’m not. Just have to prove it, old man.” I pushed away from the table, grabbed the camera, then walked down the hallway to Tatum’s bedroom.

He was sitting cross-legged on the floor at the foot of his bed, a video game controller gripped tightly in his hands. His bedroom was small and compact. A twin bed, a corner desk, and four-drawer dresser were the only furniture. The room was tidier than my apartment had ever been. No clothes on the floor, no empty drink glasses sitting around waiting to be washed. The bed was even made. “Hey,” he said, never taking his eyes off the small television perched on the dresser. “How’s the investigation coming?”

I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him take out several bad guys in his pretend game of shoot-’em-up. If the kid could handle a real gun like he handled a video controller, he could cover my back anytime.

“I met Mark Peterson.”

He jerked around and looked at me, focusing on my busted lip. “Geez … did he beat you up?”

My pride wouldn’t let me confirm that. “He got a busted nose out of it.”

He turned back to his war game and laughed. “You went for his nose? I would have gone for his jugular.”

I chuckled. “He’s only about six inches taller than me.”

“All the more reason to go for the jugular. It was closer.”

I popped him on the back of the head. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

He cut his eyes up at me, fighting a boyish grin. “She’s not my girlfriend. She went to work with her mom today.”

“Oh well. Maybe you’ll get to see her tomorrow.”

He shook his head and laughed. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Yeah, whatever. I need you outside. I want to walk over the scene again.”

He slowly nodded and sighed lightly. I guessed revisiting the scene wasn’t one of the things he wanted to do today.

I gently mussed the top of his hair. “You miss him, don’t you?”

He nodded quickly but didn’t say anything.

I exhaled deeply, understanding the longing. I wished I could tell him it would get easier but I wasn’t going to lie to him. You never accepted it, you just learned to live with it. Sooner or later the anger burns down, but never completely out. It’s always there. Smoldering, waiting for the chance to lash out because he wasn’t there anymore. And he never would be again.

I finally spoke. “Tatum, you know whatever did happen to your dad wasn’t your fault.”

I caught a glimpse of tears rolling down his cheek before he hurriedly wiped them away with the tail of his shirt. “I’m the one who told him about Alvedia’s sister,” he sniffled.

That was going to be hard to get over. It tugged at my heart thinking the kid was going to be carrying that guilt for years to come. “But you know you did the right thing. And I’m sure your dad is very, very proud of you. It’d be nice, though, if he were still here to tell you that himself, wouldn’t it?”

He nodded again, then rubbed his face with his shirt. He turned the game off, then got up and stood staring at me with reddened eyes. “You ready?”

I followed him outside to the backyard. Jasper ran circles around us, the sloppy tennis ball clutched in his mouth.

“Your dog needs something to herd.” I took the ball from Jasper and tossed it as far as I could, hoping it would buy some time between yaps.

Tatum laughed between sniffles. “He likes to herd the rabbits. Be careful where you walk—he likes to dig trenches, too. Dad sprained his ankle last year and threatened to shoot him.” A tenderness crept into his voice.

I knew exactly where he was coming from. Memories of something my dad had said or done, or something silly that made him laugh, or something Rhonda or I had done to make him angry would pop up in my brain every now and then like random snapshots. I often tried to pull them all together and piece them side by side like a patchwork quilt to make some sense of why he left. But I never could find the pattern. At least Tatum knew Ryce didn’t leave him by choice. Not that it made any real difference.

We were standing underneath the tree where Ryce died, both of us looking up at the branch as if it held the answers.

“Tell me again what happened when the paramedics got here.”

“They got him down and laid him over there.” He pointed to a grassy spot about twenty feet away.

“How’d they get him down?”

“They cut the rope.”

“But how’d they get up to him?”

“They used the ladder. I had already gotten it from the lean-to and was trying to hold him up.”

“Do you remember what kind of rope it was?”

He nodded, the image firmly implanted into his memory. “It was yellow nylon. The kind you see on boats.”

I walked back to the shed and lean-to and took a quick look around. “Did your dad keep rope like that around the shed?”

He shook his head. “I’d never known him to use a rope for anything.”

“Not even to take a tree down or maybe pull up a shrub?”

Again, he shook his head. “Dad didn’t do a lot around the house. He could do the basic stuff but for big stuff he usually hired someone who knew what they were doing.”

Ryce McCallen was a smart man.

So the rope was something Tatum couldn’t remember seeing around the house. Which meant either Ryce bought it that day for the sole purpose of ending his life, or someone brought their own rope when they came to kill him. I made a mental note to see if Peterson or McCoy owned a boat.

I studied the ladder under the lean-to for a moment and spotted several smudges that were probably fingerprints. Although I knew the prints wouldn’t do me any good, I still took a couple pictures.

“Nice camera. I bet that thing cost a pretty penny,” Tatum said.

“Yes, it did.” And I didn’t buy it by working pro bono, either. But that wasn’t the kid’s fault so I didn’t mention it.

The various shoe prints around the shed and lean-to wouldn’t do me any good either, but I took shots of those as well. I then headed back over to the tree, carefully dodging Jasper’s trenches, and studied the massive oak from every angle.

“Can you handle the ladder?” I asked Tatum.

He gave me a twelve-year-old’s smirk, then dragged the ladder over to the tree. I helped him position it, then climbed up to the top rung where I could get a look at the top-side of the branch. There was a slight wear pattern that looked like the rope had sawed through the top layer of bark. I took a couple shots, adjusting the flash to accommodate for the shade from the overhead branches. From that vantage point looking down on the ground, I spotted it. The lay of the grass coming from the driveway was different. My gaze followed along a perfect trail of crushed grass, barely noticeable, but it was there. It dipped in places, thanks to Jasper, exposing the sandy dirt underneath. But it wasn’t just one trail—it was two, running side by side, the width of a truck. I came down the ladder and crept alongside the trail.

“Tatum, have you driven the truck back here?”

“No.” He was so close behind me, he would have bumped into me if I had stopped.

“Did the paramedics drive the ambulance back here?” I knelt down and gently pushed a layer of grass aside and studied the tire tracks beneath it.

Tatum shook his head. “They parked in the driveway and carried him out on a stretcher.”

The tracks wobbled and spread out in the middle of the trail heading toward the driveway, indicating whoever was driving had turned the wheel at some point, forcing the front tires to veer off the trail by a few inches. Judging by the double tracks near the driveway, the truck was backed into the yard and came to a stop underneath the tree branch.

“Can you bring me the keys to the truck?” I asked.

He ran inside then returned a moment later with the keys. Burke rolled out onto the back deck and parked his chair beside the railing. I climbed into their old pickup, then drove slowly into the yard, carefully maneuvering around the trail. I drove toward the back of the yard then backed up to the tree, coming in from the opposite direction of the first set of tire tracks. I yelled out the window to Tatum to tell me when the tailgate was underneath the branch.

“A little bit more,” he said, then yelled, “Whoa.”

I cut the truck off, hopped out, then went around to the back and let down the tailgate. “How tall was your dad?”

Tatum looked up on the deck to Burke for the answer.

“About your height,” Burke said.

I climbed up on the tailgate and stood directly under the branch.

“About a two foot difference,” Burke said.

So that was how they did it. They didn’t use the ladder to hoist him up, they used the back of a truck. And when the noose was tied, they pulled the truck away.

I looked across the yard at Burke. “There’s tire tracks leading away from the tree.”

“Averitt McCoy has a truck,” Tatum reminded me.

Burke nodded but didn’t say anything. He turned away and slowly rolled back into the house.